Research that matters

One thing I found to be very interesting was Garcia’s intention behind asking a follow-up question in regard to the reasons behind the closing of the addiction clinic. This follow-up question illuminates an entirely new dimension to the commentary, that there are precedents and stereotypes that inform the decisions made for this community. The narratives about the people in Espanola Valley contribute to the ideas about the “instability” of the clinic and its programs. I thought this was a really great way to see just how important questions, especially clarifying questions, and language are. The language being used to describe these peoples are representative of a larger problem which Garcia continues to address throughout the rest of the chapter.

In “Tea and Solidarity: Tamil Women and Work in Postwar Sri Lanka,” Mythri Jegathesan delves into the experiences of Tamil women in the workforce following the civil war. Through a historical background in the introduction, Jegathesan sets the stage for the rest of the book, highlighting the tea plantation industry and the significant role Tamil women play in it. The fourth chapter, “Building Home,” stands out as a powerful section that explores how these women develop a sense of community in the workplace despite discrimination and violence. By shedding light on the complexities of postwar Sri Lanka and the struggles Tamil women face in navigating the workforce, Jegathesan’s work contributes significantly to the study of gender, labor, and post-conflict societies. “Tea and Solidarity” is a valuable addition to any student’s reading list.

Abrell’s book “Saving Animals: Multispecies Ecologies of Rescue and Care” is a fascinating exploration of the complex relationships between humans and animals in the context of rescue and care. The introduction sets the stage for the book’s investigation of rescue and care as a multispecies phenomenon, which involves much more than just saving animals. Chapter 2 delves deeper into the interdependence between care and rescue, and how these concepts are often in conflict with each other. Through examining the ethical, political, and social dimensions of human-animal relationships, Abrell reveals the profound impact of these interactions on animal welfare. Overall, “Saving Animals” is a valuable contribution to the field of multispecies studies, providing an insightful and nuanced perspective on the coexistence and interactions between humans and non-human animals.

It is inspiring to see how Tmail women renovate, add, and transform their houses in the line rooms. They adapt to their foreign conditions by creating assemblages and building connections with the soil, creating Ūr in and out of the physical house. I agree with the author’s criticism of the Centre for Policy Alternatives report, which says, “This house is not a home.” The author points out, “These speech acts are not born of ill will; rather, they rightly call out the intergenerational injustices of depriving a minority community of land and housing rights over a sustained period. But they also do not account for the workers’ investments that transform unlivable, inhumane spaces into livable homes (124). This positionality statement that respects interlocutors’ agency calls for not only moral deference but also respect when we try to understand the suffering experiences others have. How we go solve the problem while centering the helped people’s experiences remains a problem for policy making. What will interest me further is what Tmail women think should be their desirable assistance and houses that create a sense of Ūr.

When reading Mythri Jegathesan’s piece Tea and Solidarity: Tamil Women and Work in Postwar Sri Lanka, it was not obvious to me at first what Jegathesan was articulating when differentiating from the older times of Sri Lanka, before colonialism. However, as context was given and the current day colonialism was explained, I was able to grasp the idea of citizens not being respected of their plantations, and the overall ignorance of a trademark to a race. I was also taken back by the immense hospitality presented throughout her years of creating her ethnography. Thinking back to my culture, it is a given to make sure the individual you are with is satisfied and happy, setting a great social presence among family and friends. One thing that also intrigued me was her feminist point of view, which allowed for the unbiased view of workers and the state they are working in. One strong question that remains was how many people’s experiences did she grapple with, as the time length she spent completing the ethnographic process seems long, yet worthy of its findings. I was very fond of the strategy used in order to understand the author’s perspective, and respect how much time she dragged away from herself, in order to justify the adversity a group of people have to undergo.

Although Jegathesan does not reveal the plain thesis of the book at the very beginning of the introduction, the way the narrative unfolds allows for a helpful insight into the overall themes and aims of the ethnography. I especially thought the detail about the minister’s (potential) visit helped to add a political context that later feeds into Jegathesan’s aim to uncover workers’ perspectives in Sri Lanka’s post war development of reform and economy.

I also think it is interesting how Jegathesan narrows her scope in the introduction by walking us through her process (workers in Sri Lanka –> workers in Hill Country Tamil –> women and families in Hill Country Tamil) and detailing the logic and importance behind studying women in particular. This was thoughtful as she then explains the theoretical framework and perspectives that will be applied (feminist, humanistic) and why she will be examining certain factors such as tea plantation life, personal thoughts, etc.

Overall, I gained a good perspective on how to thoughtfully and effectively present an ethnography (and claims) in a way that logically makes sense. I also realized it is important to convince the reader why one’s scope is the most important, which I thought was well done in this introduction.

One detail that really stuck out to me in Mythri Jegathesan’s work was the provided definition of the term coolies, specifically the integral aspect of movement within this identifier. Jegathesan defines this aspect in several different components: “the physical move from homeland to industrial landscape, the calculated move from labor to commodity, and the oppressive move from human to subhuman.” (Jegathesan, 2019: 12). Reading the delineation reminded me of a similar emphasis that had appeared in a different ethnography that highlighted the significance of the feminist, Black, and Afro/Latinx populations that resided both in the United States and beyond. In Translating Blackness, Lorgia García Peña promotes a new perspective from which to analyze the Latinidad experience that requires “a reexamination of the geographical boundaries of Latinx to include new diasporas and the experiences of what Jorge Duany calls the culture of vaivén through which diasporic subjects travel back and forth between home and diaspora, participating in the life, culture, and politics of the nation they associate with their ethnic identity as well as the one in which they reside.” (García Peña, 2022: 3). Though both Jegathesan and García Peña pose different reasonings and as to why movement is crucial for their respective cases as well as different attributes to said movement (Jegathesan’s being linear and flowing in only one direction and García Peña’s flowing in multiple directions at once), it is nevertheless a key detail that explains an important part of how each group exists within their respective space-times.

To begin, I really appreciate Mythri Jegathesan’s narrative style. Some ethnographies have been difficult to read, but due to the simplistic language it makes these difficult concepts and issues easier to understand. Similarly, the use of imagery at the very beginning allows the reader to be drawn into the ethnography, and it creates an interest in the rest of the book.

Also, I was intrigued by the analysis of the word coolie. As someone who has not had much exposure to linguistic anthropology, I think this analysis of the word from various contexts complicated the understanding of singular word. Mythri Jegathesan spent significant time and became a part of the community. I know many have commented on the elders’ offering food to younger people as a sign of care, but I think it is important that she was offered food. It illustrates her role in the community and how she has been, at the least, somewhat accepted and welcomed within the community she is doing ethnographic research. In a similar manner, I think her study of the ur (I do not know how to do the bar above the u) is another example of linguistic anthropology. Through ethnography, she illustrates how ur will change based on positionality. All in all, I really enjoyed this reading, and I enjoyed seeing linguistic anthropology in action.

Similar to a previous post on the introduction of Jegathesan’s “Tea and Solidarity: Tamil Women and Work in Postwar Sri Lanka,” I was also struck by the author’s observation of the common gesture of concern and care that Tamil women would make towards younger individuals by asking if they had eaten breakfast yet. This reminds me of a similar practice in Beijing, where locals would often greet each other by asking if they had eaten lunch or dinner depending on the time of day. As someone who has experienced this type of social connection and hospitality firsthand, I appreciate the value of these small gestures in building and maintaining relationships within a community. They can create a sense of belonging and connectedness, especially for individuals who may be new to a community or experiencing barriers of any sort. I am really inspired by this and looking forward to learning more about how Tamil women have built and maintained social networks in the aftermath of the Sri Lankan Civil War, and how tea plantation work has played a role in these relationships.

I was struck by this line and Mythri Jegathesan’s follow up that it was “one of the first questions older women would ask [me].” The emphasis on care between the workers and also with Jegathesan, a researcher and technical outsider, stands out to me because in some ways it feels almost too “personal” to be reading about in an ethnographic context. The way she portrays her interactions and relationship with Sadha and her family are so dramatically different from her introduction to the reader of Saroja (who reminds me greatly of a lot of well-meaning youthful organizers in the US that suffer from the biases they so protest against) and Michael.

The concept of ‘ūr’ was really interesting to me because I guess I can’t really tell the nuance of the way the term was used by various sources and Jegathesan. There is the ūr that the Hill Country Tamil made for themselves in their line-rooms, but there is also the ūr back in India, somewhere in Tamil Nadu no matter how long a family has been in Sri Lanka, and then there is the ūr for women that comes with marriage: leaving your “ūr” for your husbands, one example for that being Devi (104). The ‘piranta ūr’ (natal home) matters less. I found the discussions of locations and their importance or lack-of-importance in various discussions of the Hill Country Tamil’s belonging in Sri Lanka. Visiting Sellamma in her line-room home on the Kirkwall plantation, Jegathesan notes that the very fact that Sellamma is comfortable and ‘lived-in’ in her home indicates that Hill Country Tamil workers become comfortable and belong to where they live and work, yet when asked earlier what her ūr is, Sellamma says “Abbottsleigh,” where she was born.

Mythri Jegathesan’s ethnography explores Hill Country Tamil workers’ desires for dignity on Sri Lanka’s tea plantations. She conducted her ethnographic research between 2008 and 2017. The length of time in which she immersed herself in the fieldwork is notable because over nearly 10 years, she was able to track the political changes in Sri Lanka thta influenced Hill County Tamil’s livelihoods. Once instance where time is significant is in the introduction where Jegathesan discusses the cycle of poverty that Hill Country Tamils face. Many of them do not own homes and experience structural debt. Despite these barriers, they still build community and attachment to their home. Jegathesan could observe this trend over her 9 years of interviews and fieldwork. 

I appreciated Jegathesan’s emphasis on the intersection of gender, class, and caste discrimination in shaping Hill Country Tamil workers’ experiences. From many of the ethnographies I’ve read, the intersection of gender and class is well explored. However, Jegathesan brings in the extra important factor of caste discrimination. Unlike gender and class which is often visible, caste status can be an invisible identity, making it harder to address. Caste status also relates to colonialism because living with a family legacy of colonialism can also be invisible identity. Jegathesan writes, “[Hill Country Tamils have made Sri Lanka their home] through their own gendered labor, work investments into land, and dwelling structures that are not legally their own” (119). Hill Country Tamils have surmounted a legacy of colonialism that opposes their autonomy to make Sri Lanka their home.

My question is how many Hill Country Tamils did Jegathesan interview over her 9 years in Sri Lanka? How long did she follow these people throughout the years? I assume she must have interviewed many more workers than she included in her book. How did she select whose stories to focus on in each chapter?

From even the introduction, this book asserts a strong narrative voice that provides perspective on the author’s ethnographic methods as a woman in Sri Lanka. I enjoyed the way Jegathesan described her interactions with the people around her, interjecting important historical background and definitions needed for the audience to follow along. For example, her analysis of the word “coolie” was especially interesting to me because of how contested the name and claiming of it is; the degree of political controversy surrounding it makes it critical to the author’s exploration of work in postwar Sri Lanka, as “the physical move from homeland to industrial landscape” captures generational impacts of “India’s global diaspora” (14). I also found it fascinating how certain groups are working to reclaim this word to “deconstruct stereotypical narratives of India’s dispersed indentured laborers” in the midst of current debates over communities of Tamil speakers on plantations (14). In her work, the author explores how “women workers want to be seen and the structural constraints they face as they move, work, and live in the face of everyday, systemic forms of marginalization” with regard to “key features of tea plantation life” from a “feminist and humanistic perspective” to illustrate the relationship between political landscapes, identity rifts, and production ethics (11). Even as a reader, it feels overwhelming to imagine how her ethnographic methodology could possibly begin to tackle such systemic industrialization built upon “class stigmatizations” of labor (22).

I like the idea of a sanctuary for animals’ rights and agency, which has not come to my awareness before. Thinking of humans’ take-for-granted domination of animals and the insensitivity and aloofness to their foods on the table reflects the nonchalance and the lack of empathy between those in power and those oppressed. The colonial logic and hegemonic structure are maintained by the ways of living and sustenance, which makes me wonder, “how should humans disrupt this conundrum between how to be authentically moral and how to be alive?” Does animal sanctuary provide a new possibility to do that in addition to vegetarianism?

This is my first time reading an ethnography of this nature, so I was curious to discover how the process would manifest in this kind of research. Immediately, I am intrigued by Abrell’s writing style and goal of making multispecies ontological texts like these more integral to the way anthropologists and people as a whole conceptualize inter-human relationships. The stories of animals like Bob and Eloise are written in an incredibly engaging way that cannot help but make me consider them to be beings of the same species as myself, making their coined status as bestia sacer even more heartbreaking. It seems that this type of anthropology and research is far more significant than most current academia would give it credit for, the divulsion of the animal condition within and without sanctuaries like the ones studied posing important inquiries about how we view ourselves and how many human concepts we impose onto non-human beings. I am curious to know about the potential criticisms this research faced since it appears to be a heavily contended subject, and what responses to those criticisms may be. I am also curious about how the interlocutors responded to the piece, if that is something they were able to do.

The ethical considerations that emerge in Abrell’s work on animal rescue and care, particularly with regard to the question of which animal species should be saved and which should be euthanized, are complex and nuanced. Such a question elicits a range of ethical dilemmas, including how to measure the worth of different animal species and the subjective nature of assessments of an animal’s quality of life. Animal welfare organizations may prioritize the rescue of domesticated animals, such as dogs and cats, over wild animals, or may concentrate on saving animals that are endangered or threatened. Furthermore, the decision to euthanize an animal is frequently based on subjective evaluations of the animal’s suffering and overall quality of life, which may differ widely across various cultural and social norms.

The questions which animals to prioritize will always be at the forefront of this discourse simply because of the finite resources allocated to animals. In an ideal world with limitless funding it wouldn’t have to be a discussion, but I personally don’t know how I would allocate resources. At every turn there is a new dilemma; what is more important: a cultural symbol like the bengal tiger or an ecological cornerstone like some type of beetle?

In the introduction of his work “Saving Animals,” Elan Abrell discusses how animal consumption regimes are built on the foundational perspective of animals as property. In studying sanctuaries, Abrell displays an alternative view where animals are viewed as subjects in relationship with humans. In moving away from the “treatment of animals as bestia sacer” (p. 20), it is clear that some animals are more fully or more easily given relational subjectivity. For example, a domesticated dog is more likely to be valued in a relational capacity by a human than the coyote living in the woods of their backyard.

How should society at large move forward in response to these ideas presented in this ethnography? How do societies effectively redesign food systems around the idea of animals as subjects rather than property? Which animals will be prioritized in promotion of their subjectivity- and will that be universal, or determined by the discretion of individual cultures?